Using time-use diaries to track changing behavior across successive stages of COVID-19 social restrictions

Significance What do people do during lockdown? This unique sequence of four time-use diary surveys provides real-time information on changing behavior in the United Kingdom during each major phase of social restrictions. We compare 24-h continuous and comprehensive information on the populations’ activities, their social context, and their location, assessing risk-related behavior during different phases of institutional response to the pandemic. Holding constant gender, age, and social grade, we show that the UK population spent on average 35 more minutes per day in high-risk activity combinations in the second UK lockdown in November 2020 than in the first lockdown (starting March 2020). This difference is shown to be associated with an increase in time spent doing paid work in the workplace. How did people change their behavior over the different phases of the UK COVID-19 restrictions, and how did these changes affect their risk of being exposed to infection? Time-use diary surveys are unique in providing a complete chronicle of daily behavior: 24-h continuous records of the populations’ activities, their social context, and their location. We present results from four such surveys, collected in real time from representative UK samples, both before and at three points over the course of the current pandemic. Comparing across the four waves, we find evidence of substantial changes in the UK population’s behavior relating to activities, locations, and social context. We assign different levels of risk to combinations of activities, locations, and copresence to compare risk-related behavior across successive “lockdowns.” We find evidence that during the second lockdown (November 2020), there was an increase in high-risk behaviors relative to the first (starting March 2020). This increase is shown to be associated with more paid work time in the workplace. At a time when capacity is still limited both in respect of immunization and track–trace technology, governments must continue to rely on changes in people’s daily behaviors to contain the spread of COVID-19 and similar viruses. Time-use diary information of this type, collected in real time across the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, can provide policy makers with information to assess and quantify changes in daily behaviors and the impact they are likely to have on overall behavioral-associated risks.